Part 4 (1/2)

I was told to carry trays from a here I had never been before--just to carry trays, orderly's work, noflat on his back, his knees drawn up under him, the sheets up to his chin; his flat, chalk-white face tilted at the ceiling

As I bent over to get his untouched tray his tortured brown eyes fell on me

”I'm in pain, Sister,” he said

No one has ever said that to ives, and his words had the character of an unformed cry

He was quite alone at the end of the ward The Sister was in her bunk

My white cap attracted his desperate senses

As he spoke his knees shot out froht ar ers with their swollen green flesh extended across the strings; but of this harp his fingers were the slave, not the master

”Shall I call your Sister?” I whispered to hi Ito operate on the elbow, but they must wait three days first”

His head turned from side to side, but his eyes never left my face I stood by him, helpless, overwhelmed by his horrible loneliness

Then I carried his tray down the long ward and past the Sister's bunk

Within, by the fire, she was laughing with the MO and drinking a cup of tea--a harmless areat pain,” I said doubtfully (It wasn't my ward, and Sisters are funny)

”I know,” she said quite decently, ”but I can't do anything He h the ward door once or twice during the evening, and still his knees, at the far end of the roo up and down

It e of death, they are more aware of life than we are

When they come back, when the postwar days set in, will they keep that vision, letting it play on lifeor must it fade?

And some become so careless of life, so careless of all the whio to make up existence, that one wrote to me:

”The only real waste is the waste of ain with Us The corn will grow again; the bread and meat can be repeated But this metal that has lain in the earth for centuries, the forrubbed forthat is the waste”

What carelessness of worldly success they should bring back with theo up and down the corridor Often they carry stretchers--now and then a stretcher with the e across it

Then I pause fro my trays, and with a bunch of forks in my hand I stand still

They take the stretcher into a ward, and while I wait I knohat they are doing behind the screens which stand around a bed against the wall

I hear the shuffle of feet as the ain, and the folds of the flag have ballooned up to receive and e?